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Good morning, Data Sheet readers. This is Coins2Day writer Aric Jenkins, filling in for Adam.
Thinking back on the past six weeks or so, one of the most significant junctures in my understanding of the coronavirus came when New York City closed its public schools. My roommate is a middle school teacher for the city’s Department of Education, and he gave me a firsthand account of the challenge ahead: implementing a sweeping remote learning program for the city’s 1.1 million students, of which about 750,000 qualify as low income.
As the pandemic progressed, my roommate routinely updated me on what it’s like to teach children online: Zoom classes have been hacked, parents have struggled to set up school-distributed laptops and learning programs, and home Internet connections at times have proved unreliable.
Issues like these are at the forefront of the news that the SAT and ACT, standardized tests that help determine the fate of millions of college applicants, will develop digital versions for students to take at home should the coronavirus pandemic continue to require social distancing in the fall.
While there may be no alternative to administering tests online during a global pandemic, critics worry that the execution will create an inequality gap.
“You’re going to have an upper-middle-class kid with his own bedroom and his own computer system with a big monitor in a comfortable environment taking his SATs,” Mark Sklarow, CEO of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, which represents admissions coaches for private colleges, told the New York Times. “And you’re going to have a kid who lives in a home maybe with spotty broadband, one family computer in the dining room… I don’t know how that can be equitable.”
And given the pressures of a potentially application-defining test, and a lack of impartial supervision at home, how can test coordinators ensure that students won’t cheat? The answer, said the president of nonprofit organization College Board, which oversees the SAT, is a remote proctoring system that “locks down everything else in the computer” and uses the device’s camera and microphone to detect any movement in the room, like helpful parents.
It goes without saying that such an intrusion of privacy in the home could make a number of families uncomfortable.
Whether the coronavirus forces social distancing to continue into the fall remains to be seen. But questions over the privacy and inequality implications of digital education certainly will continue to linger.
Aric Jenkins
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
A bird in the hand. Marking perhaps the right phone for these tough times, Apple updated its four-year-old iPhone SE model with a new design based on the iPhone 8 and a new processor from the iPhone 11. But the price, starting at just $400, is the same as the 2016 original.
Swooping in. With Zoom suffering some well-publicized setbacks, telecom giant Verizon may sense an opening. Verizon on Thursday snapped up video conferencing startup BlueJeans Network for a reported $400 million. The startup goes to Verizon's enterprise unit run by Tami Erwin, so it may or may not be a play to take on Zoom with consumers.
Nothing to see here. In another one of those Trump era investigations that didn’t review all relevant evidence, the Pentagon’s inspector general said he couldn’t find anything wrong with the way Microsoft won the $10 billion JEDI cloud contract. The inspector general also said that he “could not definitively determine” if the White House interfered in the award to Microsoft over Amazon because senior officials refused to testify on the matter, citing executive privilege.
You can't manage what you don't measure. While we're on the subject of Amazon, CEO Jeff Bezos on Thursday released his annual letter to shareholders (PDF version). In the five-page document, Bezos details how the company has tried to protect its workers and repeats a plan announced last week to build its own COVID-19 testing facility. "We are not sure how far we will get in the relevant timeframe, but we think it’s worth trying, and we stand ready to share anything we learn," Bezos writes. Still, Amazon had to shutter some operations in France on Wednesday after a court there ruled the company was not sufficiently protecting workers.
Consistency is overrated. Millennials' favorite, if not most reliable, place to trade stocks, Robinhood Markets, is raising another $250 million of venture capital in a deal that values the company at about $8 billion, Bloomberg reports. Despite multiple outages last month, Robinhood brought in $60 million of revenue, triple the take from 2019.
I'll gladly pay you today for a hamburger Tuesday. With so many small businesses in danger of disappearing during the pandemic, Facebook’s Instagram is adding some new features to its ad platform to help them. The additions make it easier for businesses to sell gift cards, offer food deliveries, or pitch fundraisers. “We want to do our part in helping them stay open, keep in touch with customers, and be informed on how to navigate this crisis,” COO Justin Osofsky said.
Ready to break this cycle. Speaking of disappearing, more jobs in tech got cut this week. Startups Carta, Opendoor, and VSCO cut a total of almost 1,000 jobs. Also GoPro is cutting 200 jobs. At considerably bigger than a startup Google, CEO Sundar Pichai says he will slow hiring and investments in data centers and marketing amid the weakening advertising environment.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The toll of stress from social distancing and isolation on our mental health during the coronavirus outbreak is another hidden impact of the pandemic. Rolling Stone reporter Elizabeth Yuko talked to experts including psychology professor Adam Fried and psychiatrist Dion Metzger about the "moral fatigue" that comes from living in the midst of an infectious disease that spreads so easily. She also explores some tactics for improving your outlook.
Until some sort of end is in sight, there are ways to help cope with moral fatigue and the stress of these higher-stakes decisions. First, Fried says that he encourages patients to recognize and acknowledge that we are in a truly unprecedented situation and that these decisions are tough. “Talking with supportive friends and family can be really helpful in terms of processing feelings, normalizing fears and doubts, and talking through decision-making,” he adds. Metzger advises her patients not to overwhelm themselves with too many decisions at once. “Break it up into one day at a time,” she says. “Anxiety has a way of making everything feel urgent.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
YouTube TV’s fight against big cable has gotten a big boost during the coronavirus pandemic By Danielle Abril
The coronavirus crisis is fintech’s chance to prove its mettle By Lucinda Shen
Should you fear government surveillance in the coronavirus era? By Jeff John Roberts
How every sector of the S&P 500 has been impacted by the coronavirus selloff By Nicolas Rapp, Brian O’Keefe, and Scott DeCarlo
Couldn’t track your stimulus check? Errors and long waits plague IRS portal rollout By Rey Mashayekhi
The Coronavirus Economy: What it’s like running a local news station during a pandemic By Jenna Schnuer
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a 50% discount for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
John Horton Conway, one of the most creative mathematicians of our lifetime, died on Saturday at the age of 82 from COVID-19. The discoverer of "surreal numbers" and other key concepts is probably best known as the inventor of the Game of Life, a model of how cells multiply. Blogger Jason Kottke surfaced this most excellent profile of Conway from 2015, which describes him as "a cross between Archimedes, Mick Jagger, and Salvador Dalí." Worth a read.
